Local hospitals get new names

Venice Regional Medical Center and two Charlotte County hospitals will join four others along Florida's Gulf Coast in taking the name “Bayfront Health” as part of a re-branding campaign for the Health Management Associates facilities announced Thursday.

HMA, a for-profit, Naples-based company with hospitals nationwide, is applying the Bayfront Health label to its operations from Brooksville to Punta Gorda in a proprietary north-south swath along the Interstate 75 corridor.

Included in the change are Bayfront Health Port Charlotte (previously Peace River Regional Medical Center), Bayfront Health Punta Gorda (previously Charlotte Regional Medical Center) and Venice Regional, which will retain its name but add “an Affiliate of Bayfront Health” to its title.

“Within a two-hour radius, we have a unified health system that reinforces the sharing of knowledge, clinical protocols, medical records and technology that results in better outcomes for our patients,” said Richard Satcher, market president for Charlotte County and chief executive of Peace River Regional Medical Center, in a statement.

The re-branding is yet another example of hospitals scrambling to position themselves to retain or increase market share and establish useful alliances during increasing competition and difficult economic times, while adapting to changes brought by health care reform, which is designed to rein in costs.

Some hospital executives have also expressed fear that Florida lawmakers' decision to reject billions in federal funds to expand Medicaid under Affordable Care Act puts them in an even more precarious financial predicament.

Hospital competition

Sarasota Memorial Hospital, a nonprofit, formed an alliance last year with Tampa Bay-based BayCare Health System, also a nonprofit, to reduce expenses. (BayCare is unrelated to HMA's new Bayfront moniker.)

Sarasota Memorial has also entered into a partnership with Columbia University to increase expertise, research and training in cardiac care.

Venice Regional, meanwhile, has attempted to fend off Sarasota Memorial's expansion into South County with a planned urgent care clinic. Venice also formed an alliance with the University of Florida and Shands HealthCare.

All of the Bayfront hospitals will share the educational and clinical affiliation with UF.

Other Florida hospitals are trying to exert pressure on lawmakers to limit the number of trauma centers that can open statewide.

The affiliation between HMA and Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg caused concern this year for some residents because Bayfront is a nonprofit and HMA runs for-profit hospitals.

Bayfront in St. Petersburg, located on city land, had been doing poorly, with thin profit margins.

HMA says the new, seven-hospital Bayfront network will account for a combined 66,000 inpatients, 202,000 emergency room visits, almost 57,000 surgeries and more than 500,000 outpatient visits each year.

The hospitals will also have transfer agreements in areas such as trauma, pediatrics, stroke and cardiac care.

The statement announcing the name change said that it heralds an integrated network in which “patients will have the benefit of choosing the facility and physician that best meets their medical needs.”

The common name will “make it easier for the community to identify the facilities in the Bayfront Health network,” the statement said.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.